For more information about what I'm interested in, see the Ponding pages.

Polyphemus Ecloses and Cecropia mates10 Jun 2005

The female crecopia attracted two males to the screened porch where she was being kept. At least one of them was wild (as I had only released one male at that point). More interestingly, the wild male that hung around was significantly larger than my captive raised ones. I suspect that I was not feeding the caterpillars the right food. In particular, I have been told that the trees that I thought were Cherry are actually Pear.

The female then mated for almost 24 hours (not bad to mate for 10% of your lifespan). I have now put her in a paper bag to lay her eggs.

Today two polyphemus eclosed. This is the female (you can tell by the thin antennae), and I let the male go. We will see if she attracts a mate overnight.

The first batch of Silk Moths have eclosed8 Jun 2005

Today, three Cecropia moths eclosed (aka hatched). I got the caterpillars in June 2004, watched them grow, and then make their cocoons in the late summer of 2004. Suprisingly, they survived the winter and are now emerging. Yesterday, I had a single male, and today two more males and a female.

The photograph is of one of the males. The wire netting he is sitting on has quarter inch squares, so you can get some idea of the scale. Yes, they have a 5-6 inch wingspan.

The males want to fly off and mate, and the females just hang around for the males to arrive. Unfortunately, we had over an inch of rain this evening, so I haven't put the males out to fly. They are native species here in New England, so they may find a mate and start another cycle.

Bluebird boxes actually work!22 Apr 2005

I was given a couple of bluebird boxes for Christmas, and I finally got around to mounting them in the yard. Of course, they are supposed to be spaced 100 yards apart (and 100 yards from my other two bluebird boxes). This design rule went out of the window!

The collected Internet wisdom was that the entrance hole should be deep to keep out predators -- so I screwed a piece of 2x4 to the front (with the approved 1.5 inch hole). Why don't they come that way?

For the last three days, I have evicted a sparrow from one box (by removing the start of their nest). This morning, the other nest box had a pair of bluebirds popping in and out. Not (yet) building a nest, but scouting out good locations.

I had intended to mount a camera in one of the boxes so that we could watch what was going on -- I'll have to move that project up the priority list.

GEOURL is back online4 Mar 2005

GEOURL is a neat website that has come back online after a long period of downtime. It allows you to find websites by geographical proximity. For example, these are the websites near me.

I notice that DeviantArt has local users.
I must confess that I really don't understand it, even though my niece has a gallery.

Frogs on the Ice3 Jan 2005

It has been unseasonably warm here over the last few days (reached 60F) -- the pond is still covered with ice, but there is some open water round the edge. Two frogs (that we saw) climbed out onto the ice to survey the scene. Unfortunately, sitting on ice is not good for a cold blooded animal, and they stop moving pretty quickly.

We rescued the two frogs and put them back into the water where they seemed a lot happier. When we picked up the frogs, they felt very cold to the touch. I guess that they were not far above freezing.

CWOP makes it into the New York Times30 Dec 2004

CWOP is the Citizen Weather Observer Program. This is a loose network of amateur
weather station operators who feed their data into NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory. From their it moves all over the map.

This is relevant to me as I run the Weather Data Quality service. This takes data from the FSL and
reformats it and then e-mails it to weather station operators as requested. The data shows how their station readings
compare with the surrounding stations. This often allows the
operator to spot problems with their sensors.

Voice over IP experiences16 Aug 2004

We decided to go with VoicePulse for a VoIP provider. The outcome has been mixed. When the quality is good, it is essentially indistinguishable from a regular landline. However, it is more common to get dropouts -- bringing the quality down to a not very good cellphone call.

I use WonderShaper to provide traffic shaping on my broadband connection (Comcast). This fixed the interaction between surfing and voice calls. However, we still get significant dropouts. The cause appears to be packet loss somewhere in NYC -- this is based on running traceroute at the troublesome moments.

On the upside, the service is cheap -- but it sounds that way too.

We've Moved!31 Jul 2004

We have finally moved to our new home. We have a new, larger, pond with an assortment of wildlife. We moved the majority of our fish from the old pond to the new pond, and we have hardly seen them since. The bad news is that we saw (twice) a snapping turtle in the new pond -- whose diet is fresh fish. Photographs will follow soon once the house is somewhat more in order!

The weather stuff is all shut down for now until I get the mast installed again. I'm hopeful that the pondcam can be made to go again, but it seems unlikely that it will ever see any fish. I reckon that that new pond is around 1,000,000 gallons, so the chance of seeing anything is small!

The hummingbirds came back. We have (at least) one pair -- they were displaying the other night.

This picture is not that good, but the light was fading when I took it. I think that in more light, I'd get a shorter exposure and more depth of field.

The pondcam will be moving soon6 Jun 2004

We are selling our house -- the open house is today. We will be moving to another house which has a much larger pond. The pondcam will be back once we complete the move.

The new pond will be so much larger that I am worried that the pondcam will never see any fish at all. It may take a couple of seasons for them to breed up enough! We will be taking our existing goldfish and shubunkins (those that we can catch), and the new owners will probably end up with all the 2004 babies!